


Masochism in C Minor

by indevan



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Character Study, M/M, Reference to Age Difference Relationships, Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-21
Updated: 2016-02-21
Packaged: 2018-05-22 08:21:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6072003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indevan/pseuds/indevan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mayuzumi had been looking forward to more club activities that involved hiding in the locker room to read and using misdirection to avoid detection.  Until Akashi Seijurou.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Masochism in C Minor

**Author's Note:**

> Mayuzumi was completely left out of the Yellow Lighter series so what started as a whim turned into more than 4k words about him.

Space is nothing.  In a library, everyone can hear you scream.  He figures he shouldn’t be there.  He should be on the roof, his hidden sanctuary, reading a light novel and smoking a cigarette but life and exams beckon and the library is his new home.  People walk by and point at him, which is new.  He hasn’t garnered this much attention since he had that affair with a teacher last year.  The teacher had been popular but the greater population’s response to finding out the identity of his young paramour was, “who?”  Mayuzumi flew under the radar but now he had something else to buoy his status for as long as he was here.  He had the notoriety of being a starter on a team that  _ almost _ won the Winter Cup.  That was a cheap day trip to cool as far as the greater population of Rakuzan went.  Their emperor’s pride didn’t seem to mind second place as he and his teammates were showered in consolation well-wishes.  Mayuzumi figured if he played his cards right, he could probably get at least one hookup out of it even if his taste normally ran older.

Right now, though, he just needs to study.  He has no idea where he wants to go or even what he wants to study, which is probably a bad idea since mocks are coming up.  Back to screaming, though.  In this library it’s more of a situation of “I have no mouth and yet I must scream” since any time anyone says a word, the librarian shoots them a look so potently venomous that the person in question seems ashamed that they even have a voice.  Everyone gets one warning and then they’re out.

He wonders now why he’s in college prep classes and it isn’t because of his own latent perfectionist, over-achieving streak.  It’s mostly because of his parents and because the college prep teacher is far less good-looking than the others and his parents don’t want “any more mishaps.”  But they’re happy and if they’re happy then it doesn’t matter that, as of this moment, his brain is deep-fried in peanut oil to give it that perfect golden glow when it’s then broiled, boiled and baked.  Nervous breakdowns, suicidal thoughts at a moment’s notice, self-mutilating tendencies: welcome to the world of Mayuzumi Chihiro.  Please remain seated at all times and pull on the yellow strap when directed.

His parents like to pretend he doesn’t have issues.  Likes to pretend that he doesn’t do things like rub his knuckles along buildings as he walks so they get cut up.  That he wanders around at unfamiliar stations for fun.  This is what Mayuzumi considers A Very Good Thing.  After the incident with his teacher, they acted legitimately surprised (tears, cries, “how could my baby?!”) and grounded him.  He could go to school and club activities and that’s it, which really put a damper on his nonexistent social life.  Either way, after two months of coming home early and doing his schoolwork, they let up and he was free to do what he pleased.  Mayuzumi had been looking forward to more club activities that involved hiding in the locker room to read and using misdirection to avoid detection.  Until Akashi Seijurou.

He’s certain now the devil exists and he’s a 173cm redhead with a laundry list of complexes.  Then again, their entire team is a Very Special Episode of some kind of something.

As if on celestial cue, someone taps his shoulder.  Mayuzumi is convinced that if he looks up, he’ll see a pair of mismatched eyes (or are they the same now?) so he glares down at his math book.  When it’s clear that he’s not going to engage them, his assailant tries a different tactic.  He pops his face right into Mayuzumi’s line of and smiles.  It’s one of those smiles where you think the person doing the smiling should be on a children’s television show talking about sharing or operating on several designer drugs.  With Mibuchi Reo, he likes to imagine that it’s somewhere in between.  If Mibuchi did do drugs, it would only be the fanciest variety.  He would have a personalized cocaine spoon and little art deco pill cases.

It takes him a moment to realize he’s talking and that he hasn’t been paying attention.  He shrugs to show he hasn’t been listening.  Mibuchi pouts and his eyes widen--those beautifully emotive eyes with doe-like lashes that have no aid from mascara, or so he says.

“Chihiro-chan,” he says like they’re the best of friends. “I need to talk to you.”

He tries to look busy but Mibuchi lays a deceptively delicate-looking hand over top the pages of his book.  Before he can contemplate slamming it shut, he opens those pouty lips and begins to speak.

“Chihiro…”

Dot.  Dot.  Dot.  That’s his warning.  Like with the librarian, he only gets one.

He sighs. “So talk.”

“You have to help us set up for the team party.”

Mayuzumi tucks his lower lip under his upper one to give himself some kind of disgusting duck bill.  A team party.  Celebrating losing, he thinks, or the fact that one of his fellow third years has been chosen on some university team or something.

“No.  I have to study.”

“Chihirooooo....” He leans down and puts his hand on his arm. “Do it for me?”

For him.  Like he means something to him.  But Mibuchi truly is beautiful.  His dark, long lashes framing his gray-green eyes.  His silky hair and pouting mouth.  Right now, those eyes are wide and pleading and Mayuzumi knows that he’ll be in the team club room rolling out crepe paper if the world was ending.

“Fine, but help me with this math problem.”

He sits down and, for the next twenty minutes, they do everything except math.  Eventually, Mibuchi leaves and he’s left with his revision notes and a math book that hasn’t had a page turned since he sat down.

“So meet us in an hour,” he diligently informs him before he goes. “Don’t forget.”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” he says back just as seriously.

He can’t help but watch Mibuchi leave because he moves like poetry.  He leads with his hips and walks like he’s on display.  Then again, he has to have that confidence.  Being openly gay since middle school is a hassle.  Mayuzumi’s own forced coming out via a teacher’s forced resignation was quickly forgotten because no one even knew who he was.

Following Mibuchi’s example, he grabs his things and heads out of the library.  On his way out, a kid heading to the reference desk smashes into him.  He laughs so Mayuzumi flips him off.  The librarian sees it but before she can make a scene, he’s out of there.  Out the double doors and into a rainy, February day.  As he makes his way across campus, he hears snippets of conversation.

“...So wasted…”

“Shit, it itches--is that bad?”

“Party time!”

He pulls out a pack of cigarettes.  They become a beacon, drawing all sorts of student and faculty as he rushes to his rooftop sanctuary.  It’s like some video game.  Avoid teachers, classmates, and advisors in an effort to reach his goal.  Smoking isn’t technically allowed in school but technicalities don’t pertain to a phantom sixth man known throughout the faculty as “Fujimoto-sensei’s folly.”

Mayuzumi finds the rooftop occupied and he realizes that his amount of cigarettes will immediately diminish.  Hayama Kotarou likes to smoke but hates buying cigarettes.  He says if he buys them--utilizing a semi-believable fake ID, or so he claims--he’ll get addicted.  Instead, he mooches.  He sees cigarettes and his little cheetah ears pick up and like his wild sense, he zooms over at alarming speed with wide, hopeful eyes and a snaggle-toothed smile.

He holds his hands out, palms up and cupped, and Mayuzumi drops a cigarette into them.  He shouldn’t but he does and Hayama is lighting it eagerly with a hideous yellow lighter.  Still, he isn’t talking and they can chew on their cigarettes in peace.  It’s odd that energetic, bouncy Hayama isn’t the one to spoil the silence.

“Is there a party?”

Hayama is far more in tune with the school’s social scene than he is (then again, a rock in the courtyard would be as well) so he figures he’s the best to ask.

“There’s always a party,” he says, exhaling smoke.

It’s properly cryptic but true enough.  Mayuzumi hears tales, bits and pieces to create an idea of a wild night.  He doesn’t party.  Has never had the inclination to party.  Hayama is party personified.

“Do you want to go?”

“God no.”

He chuckles and sucks hard on the cigarette.  Puckers his face like he doesn’t like the taste and that’s the price he pays for being a leech.

“Aren’t you setting up for the team party?”

He nods. “Of course.  Are you?”

He cocks his head to the side and his eyes sparkle in this way and Mayuzumi has a total moment of clarity.  He hasn’t been expecting it but there it is.  A moment of time slowing and everything coming into focus.  Like the universe telling him that it’s alright to socialize, to befriend his teammates in these last few months.  He blinks and the moment passes.

“Yeah,” he says belatedly.

Hayama finishes his cigarette and leaves.  He smokes too fast, like he’s in a race or he wants to get it over with.  He doesn’t cup the flame when he lights it either and, for some reason, that bothers him.  He stays there on his rooftop, contemplates reading, contemplates chucking his math text off the side.  Instead, he just finishes his cigarette and trudges to the club room.  The hour has ticked down and he doesn’t know which wire to cut to defuse the bomb so down he goes.

The club room is of a decent size since the team is really of a decent size even if Mayuzumi only knows a handful of them by name.  The rest are a nameless, faceless majority shafted by a miraculous devil, three generals, and him.  He stands near the doorway, holding his bag like a life preserver, not quite in but not quite out--like your favorite boy band at the turn of the millennium.   _ I want it that way.  _  He feels particularly helpless like a deer caught in headlights wondering if he left the oven on.  He idly wonders if he’s mixing metaphors--or is it similes?

Mibuchi has spotted this lost little lamb and they’ve gone from deer to sheep.  He thinks poultry might be next.

He grins and gives him a cheery thumbs up like he’s in an advert for a new morning beverage or hemorrhoid relief.  The one with the woman scaling the mountain while a voiceover relays the side effects at a rapidfire pace.  He’s fairly certain they say diarrhea twice.

Mayuzumi thinks there’s something especially wrong with him today and he wonders if he takes himself back to the hospital, that they’ll give his parents a refund.

He isn’t even attempting to smile.  His face is schooled into a look of pure, unadulterated indifference.  Besides, Mibuchi is smiling and waving enough to cover them both.  He’s met his approval: he’s shown up.  He looks around for Akashi, for that telltale dash of red in everyone else’s brown and black (Hayama’s macaroni-and-cheese blond notwithstanding).  He doesn’t spot him nor does he feel his commanding presence.  Akashi is the shortest one on the team but the most powerful, the scariest.   _ Oh captain, my captain. _

Mibuchi links arms with him and smiles, his head tipped to the side so his glossy hair slides in an inky shimmer, the ends brushing his shoulders.  Mayuzumi is hit with the urge to touch him, to feel his hair through his fingers, but he refrains because Nebuya is in the room and he likes having working organs.

Still, it’s been so long since someone’s actually touched him that he leans into it.  Lets himself be led to the center of the room where the decorations sit in a box.  He spots twinkle lights and crepe paper and a banner with their slogan on it.  He has a feeling Mibuchi wasn’t consulted on the decorations and that this is all they had in the closet.

“Is Akashi coming?” he asks.

Mibuchi’s lip twitches and he says, “Sei-chan has never decorated a party himself in his life.”

He doesn’t know if that means that Akashi hasn’t deigned them worthy or that he has no design sense.  It has never occurred to him before now that there might be something Akashi isn’t good at and he says so.

“Jokes,” Mibuchi says. “He cannot tell a joke.”

“Of course not,” Hayama chimes in. “He’s rich and cute.  He doesn’t have to be funny.  He’s never had to compensate for anything.”

They know him better and this unsettles Mayuzumi in a way he can’t explain.

“He can’t flirt either,” Hayama continues.  He’s eating some kind of sweet cake and digs his finger in to dislodge some from his teeth. “He tried with this one kid from Seirin and it was painful.”

“Painful,” Mibuchi echoes.

The thought of Akashi flirting with anyone, being interested in anyone, disquiets him even more.  He can’t explain it but he suddenly is no longer in the room.  His body is there but his mind is elsewhere, his vision focusing on the wall somewhere behind Nebuya’s shoulder.  He blinks and tries to come back but the tunnel vision remains.  This happens sometimes, a feeling of being outside his body or slightly misaligned to the rest of the world.

A hand touches his shoulder and Mayuzumi blinks again.  This time he’s back.  He breathes in deeply and settles himself back into reality.

Mibuchi claps and everyone whirs into motion.  He’s vice-captain, after all, the duke to Akashi’s king or however succession and hierarchy works.  Mayuzumi never paid attention in history classes.  Mayuzumi is tasked to stapling twinkle lights around the perimeter of the room while Hayama dashes under him again and again with rolls of crepe paper.  He frames the school banner with their ominous slogan and sits down.  The others are setting up tables and bowls of punch and snacks.  Mibuchi has stacks of containers in his arms he’s pulled from possible a pocket universe and begins setting them up.  They’re filled with different candies and he’s laying them in plates with the care of a master chocolatier or, at the very least, someone who owns a sweet shop.  Nebuya reaches one and he smacks the back of his hand.  He responds by wrapping Mibuchi up in his arms and pulling him away.  Mibuchi pretends to look mad but he’s blushing and smiling and it makes Mayuzumi feel off-kilter all over again.

Love is never something he’s wanted or looked for but being faced with it, he isn’t sure what to do.

“What happened with Akashi and the Seirin boy?” he asks.

Mibuchi pauses, face flushed from being spun in his boyfriend’s arms, and blinks.

“Hmm?  Oh, I think they went out or something.  I don’t know.  Sei-chan didn’t say.”

Nebuya kisses the side of his neck and he giggles and wriggles in his arm.  The other teammates are just floating there like cardboard cutouts or backdrops to the four of them.  He feels intimate and lost in a crowd at once.  His chest is constricted and he doesn’t know why.

His vision begins to swim and loss of consciousness seems imminent.  This happens sometimes--has happened since he was a kid.

“Are you okay?”

Hayama has dug another half-chewed glob of snack cake out of his mouth and is looking at him curiously.  Mibuchi and Nebuya tune in but the others don’t even look their way.  He needs air, sky, emptiness.

“Thank you for your help.”

Mibuchi’s hand is on his arm again and he’s smiling slow and pretty and Mayuzumi’s face heats up.  He doesn’t know where he is or what’s going on or what, what, why?

“Do you need some water, Chihiro-chan?”

His eyes look like sea glass or a polished gemstone.  His mother has a necklace of something called green moss agate.  That’s the color of Mibuchi’s eyes and they’re looking at him in concern and he sees him as partials of his face rather than a whole.  All of them.  Hayama’s chapped, bitten lips and his snaggle-tooth.  The strong line of Nebuya’s nose and the scruff of hair on his chin.  Mibuchi’s eyes and the way he keeps flicking his hair away from them.  He needs to sit.

He nods numbly and a water bottle is pressed in his hand.

“Why are you being so nice?” he asks.

His hand hurts as he twists the cap off, the cold plastic seemingly harder and rougher than normal, and stares at the three of them.

“Because we’re friends.”

Friends.  Why?  He doesn’t think so.  Teammates, sharers of loss.  He thinks back to his moment of clarity from earlier but it’s passed and he’s short of breath and flickering in and out of reality.

“Oh.”

Mibuchi’s hand strokes his hair as he sips the water and Mayuzumi feels like a fraud.  He’s never wanted friends.  He doesn’t have friends.  He sits on the roof with his light novels and listens to whispers behind his back in the rare times that people notice him.  Fujimoto-sensei’s folly.  The phantom sixth man.  Mayuzumi Chihiro.

The door opens and there it is.  The flash of red.  Akashi looks oddly vulnerable standing there with a box of decorations.

“It’s already done?” he asks, sounding disappointed.

He’s different from how he was but it’s another personality, right?

“Sei-chan!”

“Akashi!”

The team surges around him in support, surprise.  He’s more approachable now and everyone seems to be enjoying it.  The third years clap his shoulder and Mayuzumi sees how small he really is.  The way he carries himself (regal upbringing, right?) and the aura he exudes makes him seem so much bigger but he’s small.  Little.  He’s fine-boned and his bangs are growing in unevenly.  Mayuzumi is seized with the image of grasping his shoulders until they splinter and shatter under his hands like ceramic.  He sucks in a deep breath and sips his water.

“I brought supplies,” he says and lifts the box.

It’s full of lace-edged doilies and cellophane flowers.  Mayuzumi wrinkles his nose.

“They’re...nice,” Mibuchi says diplomatically.

Akashi smiles softly, his eyes crinkling up slightly.  He isn’t used to seeing him smile in a way that doesn’t look scary and painful.  He looks his age, even, like he really is sixteen and not sixty.  Mayuzumi likes older men but he looks at Akashi and his stomach twists up and what does it mean?  What does it mean?  He knows what it means and he hates it.  He hates himself  _ for _ it.

“I found these in a closet in one of our guest rooms,” he says, “I thought it would look homier if it wasn’t bought.”

The sentiment is lost as his words bely his wealth with the  _ plural _ of guest rooms and Mayuzumi has a brief fantasy of himself as a kept man in Akashi’s mansion.  Being a house husband and growing fat on bon bons and truffles.

He blinks slowly, coming back into himself.  The tunnel vision is gone and so are the little particles of graininess that fluttered in and out of his vision.  He drinks heartily from his water bottle as if it’ll wash away the mental image.

“The room looks complete,” Akashi says and he looks almost forlorn with his box of outdated decorations.

Mibuchi takes the box from him and holds it aloft.

“We can put these up,” he says, fluttering his lashes and curving his lips up in a smile.

“Can we?” Hayama screws up his face.  Nebuya elbows him none too gently and he amends it to, “We can.”

Akashi smiles beatifically like a king as the team whirs into motion around him.  Mayuzumi stays seated on the chair with his bottle of water and no one asks him to help.  Akashi sits next to him, perching with straight-backed posture on the very edge of the chair.  He rests the heels of his hands on his knees.

“Hello, Mayuzumi.”

“Hi.”

With Akashi so close to him, he can feel his presence.  It’s not as oppressive as it once was but it’s still startling.  Mayuzumi gulps more water.

“Are you feeling alright?” He sounds truly concerned.  This is new ground, a new Akashi.

“I, ah, was disassociating,” he says to use the word the doctors once told his parents.

“Ah.  Are you better?”

He nods.

“Good.” He shifts on the seat, folding one leg over the other.  His hands go to rest in his lap, loosely held together. “I am surprised you’re here.”

“Mibuchi asked me.”

Akashi nods. “He’s persuasive.  Did he tell your fortune?”

“Huh?”

He turns his hand out in a practiced, graceful motion.

“He does tarot readings.  Midorima had him do one for him.”

It takes Mayuzumi a moment to place who Midorima is.  Tall, green hair, glasses.  His uniform doesn’t sit right on his gangly arms and too broad shoulders.

“Oh.  No he didn’t.  He just asked.”

Akashi laughs and it’s...cute.  He has a cute laugh.  Mayuzumi is disgusted with himself.  He pines, suddenly, for the oppressive atmosphere of the library and preparation for his mocks.  Being in such close proximity to him is making him itch all over.

“What?”

“You doing something for someone because they ask.”

“Mibuchi doesn’t give up.  I saved myself at least an hour of wheedling by just saying yes.”

He looks at him now and feels that same, confusing attraction as Mibuchi stands on his toes to blue-tack doilies to the wall.  Nebuya comes up behind him and grabs him by the waist, eliciting a yelp of surprise.  Mayuzumi watches him twirl him around and press an eager kiss to those persuasive, pouting lips and his heart dips.  He hates this too.  He hates how he has this confusing attraction to his teammates compounded by a blip in the otherwise uncaring, selfish image he’s cultivated for the six people who actually know who he is.

It isn’t just Mibuchi or Akashi.  It’s the bunch of Nebuya’s muscles as he holds Mibuchi to his broad chest.  The line of his jaw and his well-sculpted cheekbones.  Hayama’s bright smile and the smooth line of his forehead.  They’re younger than him, though, and that’s the most confusing part.  His father’s friends and Fujimoto-sensei.  Sexual escapades of dubious legality with men that smell like aftershave and cigarettes.

He presses his free hand to his temple and scrunches up his face.  He feels a hand on his knee and sees that it’s attached to Akashi.  He has a smile on his face and have his eyes always looked so smolderingly sexy?

“I’m glad you’re here.  I didn’t think you would be.”

“I don’t…”

He swallows and licks his lips.  He sees it then, on Akashi’s collarbone--visible only when he moves and the crisp collar of his shirt moves with it.  It looks like a scrape, almost, and it’s faded but it’s indistinguishably a love bite.  His innards squeeze and twist into a pretzel and he finds it hard to breathe again.  He wonders how he got here.  From being annoyed by Mibuchi in the library to this torture.  He can only be a masochist of the highest degree.

“Did you fall?” he asks and curses himself.

Akashi’s hand goes to it and his face flushes. “Oh.  Uh.  I.”

He’s never seen him flustered before and it’s.  Cute.

“Kouki,” he gets out, “is more daring in some aspects.”

_ Who the fuck is Kouki? _

His mind flashes back to his attempt at conversing with a “Seirin boy.”  Which one is Kouki?  Mayuzumi’s original model?  No, that’s Tetsuya.  Their big ace in some kind of redhead solidarity?  The one with the thick eyebrows and hands so big that Mayuzumi is pretty sure he could cup Akashi’s whole ass in one hand?

“Furihata,” he clarifies and he’s still lost.

And then it hits him.  That shaking, shivering mess of a point guard Seirin sent out.   _ He’s _ dating Akashi?  The mental image from before pops into his head and he wonders why.  He clenches his jaw.  This is why he likes flying under the radar.  Why he likes being on his rooftop with his light novels and echoing emptiness.

“Oh.”

Didn’t they say he was bad at flirting?  Why does this upset him?  Is this jealousy?  Mayuzumi clenches his jaw.  He needs to be out of here.  He needs.  He needs.  He wants.

“I have to study,” he says quickly. “Exams.  I’m behind.  Bye.”

He doesn’t bow.  Just bolts out of there with his cumbersome bag and his half-empty bottle of water.  He feels Akashi’s, everyone’s eyes on him as he leaves but he tries not to let it bother him.  He stumbles back into the library because he doesn’t trust his legs to take him up the stairs.  The librarian glares at him and there’s his warning--the one.  He slumps into his seat from before and takes his math book out.  He can’t talk here.  He can just wait for the pounding in his head to lessen and for his life to reassert itself.  He’s not on the team.  He’s retired.  He...he…

He sighs.

Mayuzumi drops his head onto the table and ignores the librarian as she screams for him.  He closes his eyes and thinks that everyone really  _ can _ hear you scream in here.


End file.
